1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color difference display control apparatus, color difference control method, and control program, which evaluate the reproducibility of colors in an image forming apparatus and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Originally, various image output apparatuses such as printers, facsimiles, monitors, and the like, which handle color images preferably have uniform color reproducibility in themselves. In order to attain uniform color reproducibility among various image output apparatuses, color evaluation and correction have been conducted for output results.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-91005 discloses a color evaluation apparatus which individually performs color evaluation in specific color regions. Especially, the invention of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-91005 performs color evaluation for respective individual regions such as a flesh color region, red region, green region, blue region, and the like.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-231941 discloses a technique that objectively applies color correction for a given device by comparing measured data of a printed material printed by this device and previous measured data. Compared to a color evaluation method by visual confirmation of an operator, the color evaluation method of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-231941 is effective to reduce unnecessary color correction due to individual differences.
The above mentioned prior arts adopt, as a display method of color difference values of printed materials, a method of displaying color differences in patch icons corresponding to patches regardless of the number of patches. The prior arts display the color difference values corresponding to patches in the form of a graph, and display color differences Δa*, Δb*, and the like on a coordinate system, thus representing color biases in detail.
However, these prior arts suffer the following problems. In the output format that displays color difference values in display regions of patch icons, the display region per patch icon narrows with an increasing number of patches. If all the color values are displayed in the narrow display regions by decreasing a font size, it becomes difficult to identify the color values. By contrast, if the font size is increased, the color difference values cannot be completely displayed since the display regions remain narrow.